"Maundering about," she was saying, "like a huntsman without a horse....
You've got work to do--blood in your veins. I'm not one of your ignorant
women, Stephen. You ought to have a wife...."
"Rachel's too good," I said, at the end of a pause and perceiving I had
to say something, "to be that sort of wife."
"No woman's too good for a man," said the Fürstin von Letzlingen with
conviction. "It's what God made her for."
§ 4
My visit to Boppard was drawing to an end before I had a clear
opportunity to have things out with Rachel. It was in a little garden,
under the very shadow of that gracious cathedral at Worms, the sort of
little garden to which one is admitted by ringing a bell and tipping a
custodian. I think Worms is in many respects one of the most beautiful
cathedrals I have ever seen, so perfectly proportioned, so delicately
faded, so aloof, so free from pride or presumption, and it rises over
this green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit,
easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in
the evening glow under a press of canvas. We looked up at it for a time
and then went on with the talk to which we had been coming slowly since
the Fürstin had packed us off for it, while she went into the town with
Berwick to buy toys for her gatekeeper's children. I had talked about
myself, and the gradual replacement of my ambition to play a part in
imperial politics by wider intentions. "You know," I asked abruptly,
"why I left England?"
She thought through the briefest of pauses. "No," she decided at last.
"I made love," I said, "to Lady Mary Justin, and we were found out. We
couldn't go away together----"
"Why not?" she interjected.
"It was impossible."
For some moments neither of us spoke. "Something," she said, and then,
"Some vague report," and left these fragments to be her reply.
"We were old playmates; we were children together. We
have--something--that draws us to each other. She--she made a mistake in
marrying. We were both very young and the situation was difficult. And
then afterwards we were thrown together.... But you see that has made a
great difference to my life; it's turned me off the rails on which men
of my sort usually run. I've had to look to these other things....
They've become more to me than to most people if only because of
that...."
"You mean these ideas of yours--learning as much as you can about the
world, and then doing what you can to help other people to a better
understanding."
"Yes," I said.
"And that--will fill your life."
"It ought to."
"I suppose it ought. I suppose--you find--it does."
"Don't you think it ought to fill my life?"
"I wondered if it did."
"But why shouldn't it?"
"It's so--so cold."
My questioning silence made her attempt to explain.
"One wants life more beautiful than that," she said. "One wants----
There are things one needs, things nearer one."
We became aware of a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity for
talk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, both
blunderingly nervous and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrases
that afterwards we would have given much to recall.
"But how could life be more beautiful," I said, "than when it serves big
human ends?"
Her brows were knit. She seemed to be listening for the sound of the
unlocking gate.
"But," she said, and plunged, "one wants to be loved. Surely one needs
that."
"You see, for me--that's gone."
"Why should it be gone?"
"It is. One doesn't begin again. I mean--myself. _You_--can. You've
never begun. Not when you've loved--loved really." I forced that on her.
I over emphasized. "It was real love, you know; the real thing.... I
don't mean the mere imaginative love, blindfold love, but love that
sees.... I want you to understand that. I loved--altogether...."
Across the lawn under its trim flowering-trees appeared Berwick loaded
with little parcels, and manifestly eager to separate us, and the
Fürstin as manifestly putting on the drag.
"There's a sort of love," I hurried, "that doesn't renew itself ever.
Don't let yourself believe it does. Something else may come in its
place, but that is different. It's youth,--a wonderful newness.... Look
at that youngster. _He_ can love you like that. I've watched him. He
does. You know he does...."
"Yes," she said, as hurriedly; "but then, you see, I don't love him."
"You don't?"
"I can't."
"But he's such a fresh clean human being----"
"That's not all," said Rachel. "That's not all.... You don't
understand."
The two drew near. "It is so hard to explain," she said. "Things that
one hardly sees for oneself. Sometimes it seems one cannot help oneself.
You can't choose. You are taken...." She seemed about to say something
more, and stopped and bit her lip.
In another moment I was standing up, and the Fürstin was calling to us
across ten feet of space. "Such amoosin' little toyshops. We've got a
heap of things. Just look at him!"
He smiled over his load with anxious eyes upon our faces.
"Ten separate parcels," he said, appealing for Rachel's sympathy. "I'm
doing my best not to complain."
And rather adroitly he contrived to let two of them slip, and captured
Rachel to assist him.
He didn't relinquish her again.
§ 5
The Fürstin and I followed them along the broad, pleasant, tree-lined
street towards the railway station.
"A boy of that age ought not to marry a girl of that age," said the
Fürstin, breaking a silence.